This is an eclectic blog in which I discuss whatever in the world happens to be on my mind today.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Home truths about quackery

We live in an age of false equivalencies - the assumption that all opinions are equally valid. We see the most egregious examples of this with the media and its "he said, she said" coverage of events.They even do it with things like climate change, where deniers are routinely given the same weight as the overwhelming mass of scientific opinion.They do it with vaccination policy when they give time and space to the anti-vaxxers who make the discredited claim that vaccinations are responsible for autism.They do it in covering the obstructionism that is rampant in Washington when they pretend that both political parties are equally to blame. The equating of science-based critical thinking with quackery is surely one of the most disheartening signs of the times in which we live. But at least it gives the comics plenty of material.